After performing with Yo Yo Ma, appearing on stage with Madonna at the Super Bowl and starring in his own Gap ad, street dancer Charles “Lil’ Buck” Riley is scheduled to attain a whole new level of pop culture cachet Thursday with an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.

And he has a 20-minute video of him dancing in China to thank for it.

“They said they wanted me to come on the show and talk about it, and talk about what I do,” Mr. Riley told China Real Time recently. “A lot different people are inspired by that clip.”

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Watching the mini-documentary, commissioned by the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, it’s easy to see why Colbert’s producers were intrigued. Images of the 24-year-old from Memphis, Tennessee popping and locking in front Mao Zedong’s portrait on Tiananmen and gangsta walking the Great Wall to the bafflement of Chinese tourists are perfect grist for the comedy show’s mock jingoism.

It’s also just great fun.

“I’m the only black person in a hundred-mile radius,” the dancer marvels as he makes his way toward the Forbidden City.

The footage was shot during Mr. Riley’s visit to Beijing in November 2011 as part of the Asia Society’s inaugural U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture. Yo Yo Ma, Meryl Streep and filmmaker Joel Coen also came to Beijing to participate in the forum, but filmmaker Ole Schell told China Real Time he thought Mr. Riley’s experiences in the Chinese capital would make for better video.

“I basically just wanted to see what would happen when Lil’ Buck got to China, because he’s such a contrast, not just with the other artists, but with China itself,” said Mr. Schell. “People were looking at him like they’d seen a Martian land on their house.” (See a longer interview with Mr. Schell at the Asia Society’s online magazine ChinaFile)

Mr. Riley doesn’t shy from contrasts: He’s best known for marrying the electric street dance known as Memphis jookin with the slow sounds of Camille Saint-Saens’ solo cello melody “The Swan” – an artistic feat that turned him into a viral sensation after director Spike Jonze uploaded video of him performing the piece with Mr. Ma in Los Angeles.

That ability to embrace incongruity served him well in China, particularly at the Great Wall, which in the video almost seems as if it were built just so he could dance on it.

“It was almost like being a walking painting,” Mr. Riley said of the stares he got in China. “A lot of people thought I was a famous singer or something. It was just crazy, a little overwhelming, but you know I got used it. I made it fun.”

The dancer was taking a similar approach to his impending encounter with Stephen Colbert. “He’s so quick and so on in terms of his come backs and everything, and he’s going to joke a little, but it’s going to be fun,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Mr. Riley said he was working on a project with Shannon Lee, the daughter of martial arts megastar Bruce Lee, that he hoped would eventually take him back to across the Pacific. “It’s going to be a dance show based on Bruce Lee’s philosophy,” he said. “We definitely want to bring it to China.”

[CORRECTION: Ole Schell's mini-documentary about Charles Riley was commissioned by the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. An earlier version of this post mistakenly said it was commissioned by ChinaFile, an online magazine published by the Center on U.S.-China Relations.]

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